SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Masri and Kiro Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we deep dive into CRM success and failure, delivering real stories with real impact. I'm Dave Masri. And I'm Kira Whitzi. And today we're talking with Chris Trivers, who the Enterprise uh Salesforce leader and VP at Valley Strong uh Credit Union.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Pleasure uh to have you on the show and thanks for giving up your time uh to speak with us today. So um so so Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself um and your background in the ecosystem and what you're kind of currently up to at Valley Strong Credit Union.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, um so I um you know I I the headlines with me are uh basically I have 30 years in financial services, about 15 years in Salesforce. So seeing a lot of uh innovation and changes in the ecosystem throughout the year with some uh fairly big names in the financial services. Uh started out with G Capital, then went to TD Bank, um City City National Bank, and then my latest stop at uh Valley Strong Credit Union.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Nice. And um you were recently involved in Dreamforce uh this year just gone. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah, it's been a while since I've been back at Dreamforce and uh just jumped right in the deep end and and did uh uh uh did a little uh session on uh uh innovation with the within the credit union space.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Nice. And and is that something that listeners could go back and listen to? I'm I'm assuming it was pre-recorded in in some cases.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah, I'm sure it's out out there somewhere in the uh in the ether.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Nice. All right. So um so so Chris, why are we hired into Valley Strong Credit Union?

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Um great question. So I was they were undergoing a greenfield implementation where they were rolling out multiple Salesforce products to about 600 team members. Um and they were well within their the project when they uh realized that it it might be better to have a product um owner. So uh I was recruited to come in and bring my 15 years of experience over to Valley Strong to help them in the transition of um their financial services uh um implementation.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Awesome. What what exactly do Valley Strong Credit Union do and and credit unions you know in general? How do they make money? How do they operate?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah, uh, you know, so Valley Strong Credit Union is an 86-year-old credit union, uh, primarily local um located in the Central Valley of California, the the breadbasket of the world. Um so we have about uh uh $4 billion in assets and about 360,000 members. Um so a fairly decent sized credit union. It pales in comparison to some of the banks, but it's a top 120 credit union uh located in six counties with it within the uh the Central Valley. Um so what intrigued me about coming to Valley Strong is it's kind of grassroots banking, right? So, you know, we've heard a lot about Wall Street versus Main Street, but credit unions uh live on Main Street, you know, and and when I first got there, I didn't really understand like the difference, you know. Um, hey, I've been in financial services all those years, it'll be a piece of cake. But I kind of learned pretty quickly that you know there are some major differences um, you know, in terms of uh credit unions and banks, you know, primarily credit unions are member, member-owned uh organizations, as uh banks are um shareholder-owned. So typically that leads to better service, better rates, uh things of that nature. Um, so yeah, it was um, you know, it and you know, the other piece of it is is that because credit unions are membership driven, you there are membership requirements, just like if you join, you know, um any type of group, you you typically it's it's um either geography based or based um you know in an industry or something like that. So definitely um definitely a different world than a you know profit-driven uh bank. Um definitely has its its uh positives and negatives, but uh it it's it's a great place to to work and get back to the communities that we operate in.

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Nice. And I know we're gonna discuss some of the the difference differentiators between bank and credit union later in the in the podcast. So um so so credit unions and especially very strongly. They focus on personal lending, commercial lending, home lending, uh auto lending. What exactly a bit of everything, or what's like that they own it?

SPEAKER_01 5:20

I mean it's it varies. We we happen to be a full suite, so we have everything we uh that you mentioned uh personal, business, auto, wealth, um, you know, um, so so a little of everything, anything that our our members might need. Not all credit unions are like that. Um, you know, I would say the the majority of folks uh focus on the you know the consumer side or the retail side of the business.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Okay, got it. So so you've been with Valley Strong Credit Union for almost two years. Um you talked about kind of why you're initially brought in. Um, but but where was their journey with Salesforce prior to you joining Chris?

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Um so they had started a uh Salesforce project uh rolling out uh Financial Services Cloud, uh MuleSoft, Tableau, and uh Marketing Cloud. Um very they did not have a CRM previously, so it would it was kind of like brand new territory for for the organization.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

And and you joined um uh it was a green field implementation, but but how much of it was done prior to you to you joining?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Um yeah, it was about I would say about three-quarters of the way done. It was a system integrated led um uh project that you know that we're utilizing folks from from the team, but there was very little Salesforce knowledge within within the organization. So, you know, as as we all know, Salesforce is is different um structure than than other other um CRM systems. So it it it it was like almost like a four language to people. And I've always kind of viewed my role as being that translator between Salesforce and business, um, you know, to try to make sure that the business knows what they're getting and you know the you know we we designed the the correct um uh implement uh uh products, if you will.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Gotcha. So so there was a SI, you know, we know from speaking earlier, there was an SI that that were supporting the credit union uh as you joined, correct? Yes. Good stuff. So so why why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you encountered uh as you were coming into the brand new implementation of Salesforce, um three-quarters of the way complete. Um, what were some of the obvious challenges and what were some of the concerns or or observations that as you were in the role for a couple of months you started to uncover as a result of not being there from the get-go?

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah, so you know, in terms of joining, you know, a train that's already going down the track, right? You don't really know why decisions were made, um, who made those decisions, things of that nature. They're just, you know, they're just that way. And really my job when I got in was to get that train to the station. Um, you know, and and there there was certain um deadlines that we had to meet uh in terms of our marketing automation tool that we were going away from our key uh to to uh uh marketing cloud. We had to make sure that that that was up and running or there would be um member impact. You know, so there's a lot of decisions that had to be made in terms of getting it to the to the station, um, you know, using the train analogy. So that that you know, that was the primary role when I first got in. And again, it was a little handicapped because you know, probably wouldn't made some of the decisions that were made early on, um, had to bring people up to speed um in terms of what was the right way to do things. So so yeah, it was it was uh it was a challenge, but we get we got to the station.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Awesome. So uh just taking this a bit of a step back, you think they were three-quarters of the way to done? Um done is probably the most confusing world in the systems landscape. So that means three-quarters of the way done development or project complete, which would probably mean you're starting UAT or testing, or were you guys like three-quarters build complete, then you still had no it was three-quarters the way done the project.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

So we were just about in UAT. Um, and you know, we had to uh you know get get that project to you know to the station in in time. So it was uh, you know, and and again when UAT started, uh not soon after I got there, you know, again there was questions why are we doing this? Is this you know intended behavior, you know, all those type of things when you go through you know UAT. So so yeah, it was uh it was uh an interesting and but fun time.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

So uh I get a lot of banking background experience, not a tremendous amount of credit unions. One of the things when rolling out CRM for the first time in a bank um is moving from a very financial account-centric way of thinking to more household or person-centric uh way of thinking. Um did you guys have that kind of shift as well?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yes. Um, you know, again, one of the challenges that you know with with the core system that we use, it was um account-centric and not uh uh member centric. So we had to essentially financial accounts, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:58

That's what you mean. It's incredibly confusing for Salesforce people. Yeah, so it's just yeah. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

So, so yeah, it was, you know, that's part of the challenge, is is you, you know, if you go into our core, Chris Trivers might have a whole bunch of financial accounts or products, right? And those all show up. However, when you roll those up into Salesforce, you have to roll that up into one person. And you know, that that that becomes the challenge when you start to bring over the data and make sure that that you're getting that. Then sometimes I might even have multiple memberships, right? So, you know, which is the winning membership, uh, things of that nature. So there's a lot of decisions that you have to be made about um how how the data gets uh transformed and and brought into Salesforce.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Um you guys went with like some kind of MDM or how'd you how'd you do that?

SPEAKER_01 11:51

How'd you uh originally we went uh with an ETL tool um that that did that and and now we have transition to MuleSoft that that's doing that for us?

SPEAKER_02 12:03

So MuleSoft is matching your contact records across your various systems?

SPEAKER_01 12:11

No, uh MuleSoft is taking the the product information from our core system and uh transforming it and into a a member centric uh platform with it within Salesforce.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

I I see. So so again, again, I'm thinking more of the banking world. Um where the the what I've seen is they'll have, let's say, a retail banking for your bank accounts core system, they might have a loan management system, they might have another system for credit cards or for auto in your case. Um, and then there's nothing matching the people up, right? These are the 12 financial accounts you said you might have.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Right. Um, so with that something you had to tackle?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Um most of that information was already in in our core. You know, think about a core in the sense it's almost like an ERP, right? It had all that data in there, but it was very um linear in that there would be 10 records for Chris as opposed to just the one. And then when you bring it into Salesforce with a relational you know database, you have you have to have one member, Chris, and then multiple uh financial accounts or products that that flow into that.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

And you do that with Microsoft.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Awesome. Um yeah, so so yeah, so tell us about tell us about that shift, that mindset shift. Right? How did you how did you tackle that? How did you educate your user base?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Um Yeah, it I mean it's challenging because we had used our core system almost as a CRM. So in the past, if Chris walked into the branch, they would ask, they would look up my membership and look up my information. The goal was to get them into Salesforce and use that as the UI. Um, but you know, they there was still some resistance in that, oh, I don't see this membership. Well, the membership was there, which is rolled up in and consolidated into one record, right? So there's a lot of um uh white glove service that we had to do, hyper care in terms of making sure that people understood how to find that, you know, after we after we rolled it out. We also rolled it out kind of uh in multiple ways so that we could um uh launch and learn as as we went.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Okay, cool. And and when you took over, what like what were the biggest challenges of like coming in you know, 75% in the way and almost build complete, if not build complete, um, and then you're coming in with all this expertise that what said the organization didn't have.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah, I mean I would say the biggest challenge is we I think previously we kept um deferring decisions down the road, and then with the burning platform of our marketing automation system going on, um we had to make some um tough decisions about getting that out, getting that into the hands of the marketers. Um, so that that was probably the the biggest piece, is is just we didn't have the luxury of time. You know, we had to make essentially battlefield decisions to ensure that the the prod project hit its deadlines. Um, otherwise we would have been um without anything to you know to market to our members.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Can you give us an example of one of those?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Well, just essentially just not being, you know, the the marketing automation system was going away, right? So how do we get that out the door? Um, how we get marketing cloud out the door? So we, you know, we went with a a little bit more basic, um, what we call member 360, or you might hear about uh customer 360 within within the ecosystem to and to ensure that we could get the the product out the door.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Okay. Um and what about like were there any like decisions made by the SI that you coming in now with a different perspective? Um because I'm sure I don't know which SI you used, but I'm sure right, someone who's coming in because you said like 15 or 20 years of of financial service experiences, right? You you had uh let's say strong opinions on how things should be done. Um, were there any like where you come in and thought, like, yeah, I just disagree with how this was done by the SI, and then you had to make a decision with either I'm gonna roll forward with this or try to pivot or yeah, I mean I would think I think the biggest thing is what we're kind of touching on was is the data side of the equation.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Um, my preference would have been to roll out MuleSoft uh first as opposed to kind of a basic um ETL tool to you know to to transform the data. I mean, heck, we spent a lot of money on MuleSoft, number one, number two, it it provide it's a better, better tool. So I think that that's probably it because you know at any implementation is going to live and die by the data. And you know, the features you can tweak, the um, you know, you could bring more features in, take features away if they're too much. But if the data is screwed up, then then that kind of is the death nail for any any type of uh CRM uh implementation. Or, you know, if we want to have CRM success, you need to have a successful data strategy. Um, and I think we did, but it would have been better, I think, if we had utilized MuleSoft from the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

So you changed that when you came in, they weren't using MuleSoft?

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Yeah, that we weren't using, we were had a very limited use of of MuleSoft, and and we did that kind of after the launch of of the MVP. We we we brought in MuleSoft.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

I see. Okay. Um the only other thing maybe we should touch on Tableau. Where where'd that sit in this whole thing?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Um so Tableau, we have uh we don't have a huge footprint of Tableau. Um, you know, it's mainly used for access with our our data warehouse, our data uh data lake. And um that's where it's primarily used. We we have used some um Tableau connectors to portray some of that data within Salesforce. So, you know, that that's been really the only crossover in into uh the uh the CRM itself, um, other than the fact that you know Tableau is a is a Salesforce product.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

So so Chris, what what were you moving, uh, or I guess what were the credit union moving away from? For example, they were moving towards marketing cloud. What marketing system did they have in place prior?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

There was a uh tool called Marquee, uh, which was our it was um we weren't using any CRM capabilities. It was primarily a marketing automation system. So that that was the system that we were sunsetting um to bring it into marketing cloud.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

What about on the core side? Um were that were they using kind of any kind of sales cloud, similar similar type of product, CRM, core CRM uh products?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

There there was there was uh nothing uh prior to prior to us coming in. Um, you know, and again, one of the one of the reasons why we wanted to have a system like Salesforce is that as a growing institution, as an innovative institution, we wanted to make sure, you know, that that we were um scalable for the future, right? So uh we had just come off two acquisitions, there's always talk about additional ones. You know, you you know, while people would love to run their business off of uh sell spreadsheets, that becomes extremely difficult the the bigger you get. You know, we have an extremely big footprint, you know, 300, 400 miles from tip to tip. Um, so it's again tough to manage um something like that with without a CRM system. So one of the reasons that that we we implemented Salesforce was was just to kind of um help future-proof our uh our organization.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

I think um the pandemic accelerated a lot of that thinking for companies, right? Um the digital push, the digital age, it's surprising you hear about these businesses that have been in business and thriving for 50, 60 years, that are still on spreadsheets, right? And and haven't adopted a CRM yet. Um, you know, it's quite quite fascinating. Uh, and you know, there's a lot of opportunity there for individuals, partners, etc. as well. So um talking of partners, so we we touched on that you, you know, that the union were heavy, heavily reliant on uh on an SI, three-quarters of the implementation done by them, not really any Salesforce team at all in place, Chris, prior to your arrival, correct?

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

So so how did you go about transitioning the reliance from the SI to building the team in-house? What did that look like? I'm assuming it wasn't let's go hire three people overnight kind of thing. Did it take time to you know get the business ready from a mindset why the benefits of having a team in-house were how do you go about that?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah, so you know, it was an interesting process. It probably took a year from launch to starting to build the Salesforce Center of Excellence um at Valley Strong, or as I call it, the Salesforce practice. Um, you know, we went, it was a journey. We we went out and we um interviewed a lot of different credit unions of equal size or larger. Uh, we touched on the differences between banks and credit unions. Um, credit unions are very open to talking to their competitors and you know, having sharing best practices and things of that nature. Um, you know, it's it's encouraged. You know, we we have a round table with Salesforce, which Collins, he helps mediate that. Um in the banking world, there's not as much cooperation or collaboration, but we essentially went on a tour from um Chicago to New York visiting three or four different credit unions that had been doing it for a while and try to understand their secret sauce. And what where where it really came back out to is they all had internal teams. Uh, the internal teams um had you know uh functional knowledge, uh, and then they brought Salesforce uh expertise to the bear of that. So after that, we started formulating a plan of hey, let's bring folks in who know the various functions. So today I have uh four business analysts who work for me, all of whom know nothing about Salesforce. So um it's it's a bit of a process to teach them Salesforce and teach them business analysts. So it's been a lot of fun in terms of doing that. Um everyone's extremely open, but the thought is hey, if they know the business, they know the where where all the pain points are, they know the systems, things of that nature. So that's the process we're doing. We've uh since hired uh a senior engineer. So we're starting to put the pieces in place in terms of both the technical and and the functional side of the place. But like I said, it took a it it took a bit of a to get there. So um, you know, even now that that we're entering you know year two essentially, those pieces are just being plugged into place. Um, and the hope is that we become less and less reliant on the system integrators.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Got you. So again, find it fascinating. Credit unions are a lot more collaborative than competitive, let's say. I'm sure they compete, right? There's gonna be some crossover, there's gonna be some gray area where maybe battling for the same type of customer in some cases. But what why why do you think there is a lot more positivity around collaboration versus we're not sharing what how we're innovating because we don't want you to get the upper hand on us? Can you pinpoint that to anything?

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Yeah, I mean, some of it is again the membership. Our members, there's very little crossover in our members, right? So my members uh in Central Valley of California are probably not going to be a member um of a of a credit union in New York. But I think it goes more to that is just being more community focused, um, being you know, less um, you know, it's just kind of in the DNA to do that. Um, and and that's the part that I always loved about the um Salesforce Ohana. Um, you know, everyone is very collaborative. Um, but then when you kind of get in your industry vertical and you want to understand like what people are doing, you know, people tend to clam up. So um so I I do think it's it's a bit of less overlap of of members, um, but more so just what is in the DNA of a credit union is is we're here to serve our members. Um and you know, there's 4,500 or some odd credit unions in in the US. And you know, it's it's you know, we want we want Main Street to survive uh over over Wall Street. So it's you know, it's it's a nice, it's a nice world. Um, you know, what we were told, what we've been told at by Salesforce is credit unions are the fastest growing vertical within their financial services vertical. So it's also nice to be part of a rising tide, I guess. So um so so yeah, it it is very refreshing. You know, we I I made some made some good good contact, good friends within the industry when we went to Dreamforce, you know, it was it was great to to meet everybody and and kind of you know um you know just celebrate, shall we say?

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Yeah. Other than the collabor the collaborative aspect and knowledge sharing, the willingness to to kind of help one another. Anything else you found surprising or on the flip side, unexpected, um, you know, negatively, let's say, um, compared to your time that was more heavily focused on the banking side?

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Well, I mean, it's at the the bank, we had bigger budgets, we had more headcount, um, we had kind of more defined roles. Here, you know, I wear many hats, right? So I'm you know, I'm the product owner, I'm uh teaching the BAs, I'm also a business analyst, you know. So at the at my my the previous bank that I worked at, I had 10 or so BAs that worked for me. Um, you know, so it's then we probably had about 20, 25 within the organization. So it's it's definitely a different scale, um, but it's it's also a different mentality in terms of making sure that we we get our hands dirty, that we wear many hats, that we we get the job done, and and it's you know, don't point fingers.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Smaller teams and doing more with less is something that we often hear from people like yourself and other guests we've had on the show over the the last few months. And I think it's something that's gonna continue to be a topic. How do we do more with less? Any tips or or quick wins that you've experienced in particular with operating on a uh with smaller headcount, Chris, from that bigger team environment coming from the big corporate banks to go into a smaller credit union? Any advice for other leaders that maybe find themselves with a similar predicament?

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Um, I think stakeholders are extremely important. So who are the proponents, who are who are the opponents of Salesforce, get to know them, understand why. Um you know, we we discovered some Salesforce expertise that was existing in our retail organization, and that's been like a home run, right? So, you know, this individual had some experience with Salesforce, was very driven to get um more knowledge, uh, took on a role within um within the retail organization and is now as qualified as any Salesforce person I ever met, right? So there's that hidden talent out there that that you might not know about. Um, and again, that that individual worked for um one of our largest stakeholders and biggest proponents of of Salesforce, the biggest advocates. Um it's kind of a win-win, right? So that that was a a big piece of it is find out, you know, that kind of that hidden talent. Um and then really just the approach that we're going on now is solving pain points for the functions or the the stakeholders. Once you do that, then they they see, oh wow, then I could probably use Salesforce for this issue or that issue, as opposed to it being, oh, it's just uh just a uh um you know a sales tool.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

So what about the reverse? Anything that you think the credit union world can learn from the banking world?

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Um there's gotta be something, Chris.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah, I mean it's you know, I I think the biggest thing is, you know, allow the experts to get the job done. You know, there's a lot of consensus building, a lot of um, you know, a lot of meetings where you're trying to get uh agreement on things, and you know, that kind of slow slows us down in that regard. The other piece of it is is if if we if we have if we if you know credit unions by nature are not fast followers, um, but if we want to be innovative, we want to catch up to the banks, whether they be community or large banks, we have to kind of invest the dollars, right? So, you know, it's it's a bit of that um, you know, is you know, we're losing the arms race if if if we if we don't do that. So, you know, those would be like you know, kind of the things that come to my to my thought is just in terms of the, you know, hey, let's let's um you know build the best product, let's get it out the door in an MVP fashion, let's make sure that we have the the budgets to to be successful and you know get it done and keep you know and keep building incrementally onto the onto the um to the product.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Cool. So can you tell us a little bit more about the membership model? What like what did that mean? That means I open an account or I take a loan or I have to pay a membership fee? Like how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Um so there's typically rules, right? So in our case, we're geographically based. You have to um live, work, or worship it um in in one of our six counties, right? So that's part of membership. Um, you know, the membership is basically a five dollar um share account, which is essentially a savings account, right? So it's the you know, you're you're funding your savings account with five dollars, and that's your that's your membership. Other credit unions, you might be, you know, we started out as a uh credit union for teachers, right? So we served the teachers of Kern County. Um, you know, every big company, you know, General Electric had one, you know, will have credit unions, right? So if you work at um you know, if you work at uh credit um general electric, you can join their credit unions. It's a bit like the USAA model. Um if you were in the military or a relative was in the military, you you can get you can join um uh USAA. Same type of thing with a credit union. Um so it's you know, if you're living in in Ohio uh and you don't have any tie-in to one of our six counties, i.e. you didn't used to live there and and joined, you know, you you can't necessarily become a member. So you know that that's really how how the membership works.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

So I I mean, how like how how can you possibly grow and compete with the big bank if that's the goal, which I don't think it is the goal, if you're limiting yourself to like six counties.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Well, keep in mind those six counties have millions and millions of people. Um but there there are other ways to do it. I mean, you know, you could you can join, uh I mean, there's indirect models where you can get you know an auto loan and and not necessarily be in there, but to be a traditional member, you know, you have to be in that world. Um, you know, and then the other way to grow is you know through acquisition, um, getting new territories. You know, again, you know, we have about 400 miles of territory. There's a lot of white space in those areas. So, you know, just providing better services, telling the valley strong story, you know, things of that nature, um, we'll will continue to continue to grow.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Forgive the naiveness, uh, Chris. It might be a dumb question, but what's stopping a credit union just saying I'll lend money to whoever I want, whether on the East Coast, Central, West, whatever, I don't care. I'm just gonna take on everyone.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Um like is there an is there a gentleman's agreement with all the owners of credit unions that you know you are only allowed to do business in certain states, or do you have to get some kind of like well you're so you're either you're either a state chartered um credit union or you're a uh federally um chartered, and there's very few federally chartered ones. So there are there are um credit unions, the the bigger ones that you might might know of who have offices all over the country. Um some of them are federally chartered, some of them are just have more expansive territories. Um the other way to do that is potentially, you know, you can you can buy a membership and um and you know join that way, but typically people um you know that that's a more indirect way of of of joining. But yeah, I mean it's you would you would get in trouble with the regulators if if you did what you what you are um suggesting.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

It's kind of gonna be illegal. There's a legal difference and law. The the laws surrounding how credit unions have to operate are different than how banks have to operate.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah, and keep in mind that credit unions um are tax exempt, right? So if if you would get in trouble and lose that, that's uh a huge um huge uh penalty to pay, shall we say.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

So we talked a bit about um BAs in your team, um, and that's been a recurring piece to your role and when you build teams, it's building with the BA mindset of resources. So we just want to cover a little bit more on that on that area. Um how how typically do you go about finding the balance between an admin, developer, BAs? What what what do you think a good BA should bring to the table?

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Um, first of all, they need to have that passion. Um, you know, they it they you have to ask, you know, the the whys, and I call it the five whys, you know, it's almost like putting that toddler in you, you know, why daddy, why, why, why, why, why? You know, you have to get into that nature. Um, so that's a big piece of it. In the Salesforce world, it's obviously extremely important to understand the uh Salesforce piece of it, but fundamentally with business um being a business analyst, it's about finding those pain points and um trying to uh bring to bear a technology in this case, Salesforce, to help assist with that. Um, so it's just you know, when I first started, it was very much um admin, you know, and what you admin driven and what you become is almost order takers. Hey, I want you, I have this issue, or hey, I need this report. Um, and you don't necessarily have a seat at the table. Um, if you have a business analyst um uh viewpoint and your role is to solve uh pain points for either the members or the team members, then that that's a that's a wonderful thing. You can start to look at things like you know how you're making processes more efficient, how you how you're saving you know the institution money. It's it's it's much more of a of an optimistic, shall we say, standpoint than um than being a ticket taker or an order taker, which you know, if you're in as an admin or really in any in a lot of IT um worlds, that hey, something's broke, fix it for me, as opposed to, hey, I've got an issue. Oh, you fixed it for me, you're my hero, type of thing. So it's it's it's really just just a mind shift, um, if you will, of how to deploy that. And again, in in some instances, you're still doing some admin capability, you know, user support, things of that nature. Um, so it's not like you're you're um not doing those things, it's really about the balance. So, you know, in my world, um, you know, if you're 70% business analyst and 30% um um system admin, that's that's probably a good, a good um uh percentage, if you will. So you know that that's that's kind of my viewpoint. Um you know, and and what we've what I've seen is as Salesforce gets more complicated, you know, the admin, it's tougher for that admin to be a developer too and a business analyst. So you you need to have a little bit more um understanding of the roles. And and my what I I tend to view the world as either your technical, i.e. a developer, um, your functional, i.e. your business analyst, or you're a be uh or your system admin admin, which is kind of in that in-between area. And they can kind of go either way, right? They can either be part functional or they could be part technical, depending on their expertise. But I definitely think once you get in the mindset of solving uh, you know, people's pain points, um, functional um issues for a um an organization, you know, you you you start to get that seat at the table, you get bigger budgets, um, you get more people, you know, it becomes more of a flywheel in terms of of what you're doing because because you're show showing that value.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

So do you think that their role should change based on where you are in the development cycle? So, for example, if you're a project heavy focused, maybe they should have more skills around uh process uh diagramming and understanding the process flow, let's say the account opening process, and then writing that into terms of technical details. And then maybe when you're more maintenance mode, they might need more I don't know, emotional skills that can work with the user unless they talk them off a cliff. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Well, the truth at least, what I've experienced is you're always in both of those worlds. There's some things that are in maintenance, um, some some of the things that you're you're growing capabilities. Um, so so in my estimation, you kind of need a bit of both. Um, you know, it it's really about about focus. And you know, with financial services, because we're heavily regulated, you don't necessarily want to have you know too um too much um people drifting too much into the the development side. So there tends to be more of a a divide there. Um but you know, I I do think you know that that you need kind of a bit of bit of both worlds. You know, you need to make sure that things aren't broken. Um and if they are broken, you need to need to get them fixed as opposed, and then you also need to be new doing new kind of groundbreaking things.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

But you don't think it should change based on where you are in the development cycle?

SPEAKER_01 40:46

No. Because I I mean in my world, you're you're kind of you're you're all over the place, right? So um, you know, I I I think from my perspective, it you need to you need to have kind of a foot in both worlds.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Okay, what about uh the line between the BA and the SA, the system admin or an architect, let's say. Where where do you draw that line? Um, like how much should it should a good BA be involved in you know the system design from a technical perspective?

SPEAKER_01 41:22

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I mean, the organizations like a credit union typically don't have the firepower to have a solutions um architect on on hand. In general, I I kind of coach my BAs, we don't solution. You know, you might have a suggested uh solution, but we we want to get the user stories, we want to make sure that we understand the pain points, um, but we don't necessarily want to go uh and and say, hey, this is the way to do it, because it may not may not be the way to do it. So we we can help influence that. And typically in in my world, that's been more on the on the the technical side of the equation. Um, you know, again, we can help influence it and say, hey, this is a proposed solution, uh, but ultimately we want to make sure that that it's scalable. Um and it may work in a limited use case, but not may not work if it uh in a much broader use case. So typically that that solutioning is is more on on the engineering side in our world.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Wow. So so um in the Salesforce world, particularly on the SI side, I would say they would very much think that BA did a lot of solutioning, particularly when it comes to the uh the low code stuff. Right. Right. Um, do you think that's a mistake?

SPEAKER_01 42:50

No, I mean I think it works in in their model. They that there should be a free model. Um again, in in in our world, uh heavily regulated uh typically no. If it's if it's truly configurations, right, you know, yeah, you know, that's kind of a gray arrow. You know, we we can do more if the BAs know how to configure, but if if it's truly development, um I I've always seen that exist on the on the engineering side as opposed to the functional side. That to me, that's that clear division um of of um of responsibilities.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I think it's more of a uh a typical BA role, which is really it should, like Salesforce likes to start to, or I get the Salesforce World likes to kind of play with these names a little bit, right? The BA is kind of like a developer, they used to have to pass the developer cert, then they change the developer cert um to a platform developer. Um and the same thing honestly with the admin role. Like the admin role also, like I I've always hated the term admin. I was like because at

SPEAKER_01 44:00

feel like a system admin should be dealing with things like password resets logging into the system training um not necessarily solutions so where do you where do you see a sales force admin are they a b a are they an sa or um so they're either in that gray area or their responsibilities are part of a ba kind of that 70 30 split um at the at my last bank we we did we did typical system in administration stuff but it was only 30% of our time and granted we could spread that over 10 folks so there was there was bandwidth there um at my uh at valley strong we we have an admin a dedicated admin um but i i do think that anybody who's on the functional side should have some business analyst experience and um also should have some system admin experience as well so so in terms of the ba piece so um i guess where do BAs go wrong when you're interviewing for BAs um I'm I'm sure you have some interview questions we're not asking you to give away secret questions but what makes a good BA in your opinion what gives you the kind of inclination when you're interviewing individuals for a BA role that they're going to be successful in their role? Yeah I mean that's that's a great question. I mean I first thing when I do when I'm interviewing is make sure that everybody understands what's the operational definition of of a of a business analyst because it it varies from organization to organization. Typically in our world it goes from everywhere from intake to training um and then kind of in the middle it goes into the development um stream but you're kind of involved in everything but the development from from from that perspective what makes a good BA is really that understanding of what is the pain point why are we doing this um I I tried to tell the BAs that have worked for me is like look for this initiative you are the product owner if I come to you and I I want you to under I want to understand why we're doing it not just because someone said they needed to do it again that that's more of that order taking mentality. So understanding the context uh what are we trying to solve for um you know are all big things um you know that passion is extremely important um tool usage right so you you know you have to be able to do current and future process um maps so you need to understand those um you know with your tool of choice it doesn't really matter to me whether it's PowerPoint or Miro or you know anything anything like that um you know that that becomes extremely important again to show that and then the other piece of it is just making sure that you measure so like what is the elapsed time in the current process so how do we know if we're making a difference right so um those are the things that I kind of look for um and and making sure that they are are motivated because you know it might take you know two months to get a good business requirement document done right but once you do it that becomes a living breathing document that we can look at you know both before during and after the project um so so I think you know that that's the piece of it you know that that that that I look for when I'm interviewing.

SPEAKER_03 47:34

Where where do you see the good BAs come in from and when I asked that question I I'm thinking more does an admin typically make a good BA or or is it it or are some of the good BAs that you've you've hired they've started out perhaps as a IT BA or a or a business BA and they've got in they've learned the Salesforce piece secondary too so I guess the question is do you do you like your BAs coming from a Salesforce admin background transition into the business side of things or do you prefer solid BA skill set learning Salesforce? What do you find is easier to teach?

SPEAKER_02 48:09

Yeah just to tack onto that how important is industry knowledge well you're asking the tough questions now.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

We didn't say it was going to be easier the truth is you can do it either way right you can you can hire somebody who knows Salesforce and teach them business analysts and you can hire people who don't know um uh business analysis and teach them Salesforce I think out of all those things the the one one piece that you that's harder to learn is the functional knowledge so if I am a BA for our retail team I need to know something completely different than our central operations team so you also need to know have functional ability as as well so the path that we're going down at Valley Strong is to hire folks um who have that functional knowledge and then teach them both business analysts and um uh salesforce that's a slower ramp up period to be honest with you but I think the um I think the rewards are are greater at the end of it um you know at the bank we hired people who were business analysts and uh knew sales force um and then we had to teach them the industry knowledge right so I think out of all those things the industry knowledge is probably least but it's also the secret sauce if you don't understand how a financial institution makes money or you know how they make sausages I like to say it it you're never going to be um as successful so you're never gonna find the perfect candidate so you have to kind of build to their uh strengths and support support their development areas if you will and and if they're going to be a great BA they they need to work on on industry knowledge sales force knowledge and business analyst knowledge and then the soft skills as well so I I I tend to find um the the industry and the soft skills are almost impossible to find outside the US offshore or even near shore for whatever reason I don't know if it's just the the the culture or what um but it's something that's that's really really difficult.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

Before you move on Kiro that true you can't find the perfect candidate we're gonna have to talk offline about that Chris that's why we exist.

SPEAKER_03 50:46

But um I I do have a question that I know a lot of uh and that and one that's affordable yeah well there you go that that might be the you pay for what you get buy cheap buy twice as well um same for recruiters that you use but um but but um in in terms of obviously salesforce brought out about 12 months ago a business analyst certification with the more technical Salesforce roles there's architect certs there's marketing cloud certs right and and the decision to bring out the BA cert the cynical would say it was a great great marketing money maker others would say it would be to help companies to try and differentiate someone who is actually a BA versus an admin doing that that 30% business analysis work right again just before we move on any uh is there any certification whether it's Salesforce or or unrelated or type of study that you've seen good BAs they have in common like is there a certain business analysis certification that you're aware of or just kind of general project management that you found that good BAs tend to have or field of study does that impact things um yeah I mean that that's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

I mean I would probably advocate that Salesforce should have come out with a BA much sooner. That being said if you pass their certification doesn't mean that you're ready to be successful on day one. So you know I I think the bigger thing is knowing some of the adjacent things like having you know agile um training agile certification right knowing how to how to do things in it um within within that framework you know that's something you can learn on the job but if you have that going in I think that's big um you know understanding some of the tools like Jira and things of those natures I think are are important. Hey I just don't want you to be a user of it I want you to be able to do add new fields do boards do reporting and things of that nature right and that's always the tough thing is how do you how do you um find out that hey Chris was just a user of Jira or Azure DevOps but doesn't know how to do anything with it. So you know I find those helpful um in general what I have asked my team members to do is to get that I still believe that the Salesforce certified admin the 201 as we used to know it um in the old days is the foundation for everything right so they you know if they're going to be long timers in in in um dealing with Salesforce they need to get that um you know it they don't necessarily need to have it all um right out of the gate but you know other other than that you know um you know I I I'm not sure that a ton of certifications are are really required to to do the job um in fact I would probably advocate that it's kind of watered down the market because everybody has one it's kind of like the Oprah now you get a certification you get a certification you get a certification and and you don't really know who who has it um you know and you have people and then it also goes with with trail uh trailhead badges as well like people can become double ranger and not not necessarily know know how to do some of these things right so it it's a bit of a a a game to try to figure out like what people have um what I try to tell folks is you know get your BA get get your associate and get your admin and then from there decide do you want to be on the technical side and go down that those certifications and get more um development skills or do you want to or do you want to stay on the on the functional side in which case you probably don't need too many more you know make maybe some of the AI stuff or you know the sales consultant or what have you that those become important but at least in industry um I want you to have a a strong foundation um which I think the the sale uh certified Salesforce admin gives you um and then then um from there you just build off of that either on the developer side or or on the functional side okay cool so um you said you came in right to to Valley Strong project was was near complete or or three quarters through um our understanding is you're currently starting or recently started a new project to roll out Salesforce to your call centers um and now I guess you're kicking that off right so you so so what what did you do different right now and and particularly talking about all of these skills that you need um I assume you assemble some kind of team right how how does how's how's that going or how'd you how'd you assemble that team what was your plan here? Yeah so I mean I one I think one of the biggest differences that we did when we started with the contact uh center transformation was really have the contact center be more involved in the project than than we had previously with the other functions the other functions they were kind of passengers um you know probably backseat passengers and you know they didn't really understand the product that that they were getting because they were they were um not necessarily they weren't helping navigate or or or drive the drive the the car if you will so with a contact center we had them more involved in the um in everything right so we had a business analyst we had the contact center leader we had you know their managers were all heavily invested in in rolling out uh you know or or helping to design the um the the product that we have um so I think from that perspective that's kind of the lessons learned we um from from the one to the other so from from um you know that that perspective you know we we you know and we also uh went with a different SI so there there's some different things that we did with with that um uh contact center transformation other than what we did with the initial uh MVP for for our CRM side so one of the interesting things about contact centers particularly contact center managers um is they tend to have very hard strong KPIs my call to resolution has to be under a minute and a half um and our reps have to take you know 35 calls a day and we want 25% of the be like like just absolute solid metrics. Does that drive or change how you run this project or how you like in a way it's nice that you have really really super clear goals and you can measure against yeah no no 100% and you know as we talk about lessons learned you know I've always been a sales cloud guy and I always like rolling out to the sales um teams um I understand that world but it's also way harder to measure to your point right you know you get you get on the service side you have you have clear metrics that that that you want to look at that that you can help drive are are they getting better are they getting worse you know the those type of things um and you can show the value that you're driving you know depending on on which way way those metrics are going. So you know from from my perspective it it's it's nice to work on the service um side I I hadn't had a lot of experience doing that but it is certainly a a good way to um you know to be able to measure the impact and and and what have you but did that change your approach at all? I don't think it really changes the approach. I mean you don't want to make it worse um and then you know the thought is uh you know I we we we talked about this uh a bit offline but you know I think we we um measured that our contact center uses about 26 different applications um throughout the day maybe obviously not on every call but they're constantly going into other applications and that that slows down the process there's a lot of handoffs that go on so the whole goal in terms of that was to like hey how can we eliminate some of those um swivel chairs that they're doing how how do we make their roles a lot easier um number one number two if you think about a brand new team member who joins 26 is a lot to learn you know and some of them are simple right you know outlook um but you know it some of them get very complex like how do you how do you look up a credit card um go to the credit card uh uh portal and and look things up there so that's the other piece of it is how do you make um the ramp up time for a new one easier if it's all if it's in in my opinion if it's all embedded in in in Salesforce hopefully that makes it a little bit easier for folks to to learn some of these disparate systems that they had to go into. Yeah well I mean since we're talking contact center we have to ask Agent Force is on your uh roadmap it's on a roadmap um you know it it's a pretty big piece on the service side uh would love you know it was it it was interesting timing because our second phase of the contact center was going to be bots anyways so that you know the choice becomes do you go old fashioned bots you know and use prompt builder and things of that nature or do you use agent force I think the preference is to go with uh agent force but it it's so new right and then it's also consumption based I think it's it's a it's a pretty scary thing um but it's it's nice to see the energy and the influence and the money that Salesforce is throwing behind that in terms of giving incentives to customers to SIs and what have you so I I see it definitely on our our roadmap the question is is it you know this year or next year you know that's that's kind of to be determined um because it the the tough part about it is you you do a great job and you consume all your consumption then you have to buy more right if you if you buy too much you know you uh you don't use it that that's not a good thing either so trying to find that Goldilocks um strategy you know the the consumption that's just right to get uh you know to get um you know some value from it you know because it $2 or or whatever it ends up being um a interaction that that that can add up quickly so it's uh interesting way to go but I I do think at some point we'll we'll take a look at it uh there are other credit unions um other other uh banks who are are looking at it for sure it you know it's just a question of like what use case you take and you know how do you how do you take your swing with with with getting the you know proving it proving it out you're not saying you have to buy the credits in advance and it's use them or lose them. It is yes that's not that's not really I think yeah so it's I mean you're buying it you're you know they roll over every month but I believe believe it's after a year um after the the year you if you don't use them you you've lost they eventually expire okay um and I know you didn't say this but you kind of implied it you could go both right you can go with a traditional bot because I really like the Einstein bots um I think I think they're great right you can go both no you could definitely go both uh we don't have either right so it's like where where do you put your your chips do you you spread around your money or do you put it on on red and go with uh you know with agent force so that I mean that's really what what it boils down to. Um I I believe that agent force will be easier to manage and to update than than the Einstein bots but I don't know that for for a fact um but yeah it's it's it you you could definitely do both um you know and and there may be use cases where you want to use one or the other you know in our world it was like you know do we like I said do you spread around the chips on the roulette wheel or do you or do you just you know bet on on on red and and go from there?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:40

We're just conscious of time so um there is one other product that you're working on Chris that we talked about um so SPIF so Salesforce acquired SPIF at the beginning of this year uh my my understanding uh correct me if I'm wrong but it's all centered around additional motivation for sales teams helping to build commission plans automatic payouts etc making it easier uh for sales teams and sellers to understand commission and get paid and and hit their targets quicker correct yeah and then the other piece of that is the administration administrative burden on trying to get those people paid um again you know using spreadsheets or sharepoints or things of that nature um becomes um tough so how how do you make it you know easier um how do you how do you um also look at things like exceptions so there's always exceptions you know Chris just joined yesterday um last month um but he he he did a bang bang up job so we want to give him something but you know you you got to make sure that's all all audited and notated and and what have you um but then the other piece of it is for that um seller or frontline person if it's embedded in Salesforce they can literally say hey if I sell this uh loan or this loan closes that this is how much I'm gonna make or this is how much I I I stand to gain. So there's a there's also a a bit of that in terms of you know kind of that calculation not not a huge piece of it but you know it's always you know again it's always tough to to learn that or to show somebody that but if it's embedded in Salesforce it it can kind of show where you are uh and you know then you have like the leaderboard and and things of that nature uh that that you can look at so we're excited about it um you know there's not a lot of credit unions that have utilized it um you know one of the things that you know experience matters at a at a credit union so for the longest time you know credit unions were not very sales driven um so you know we had the discussion earlier like how do we grow well you know you try you try to get more you know more uh you know more products or more wallet share from from um you know members and things of that nature so I think you know that that's it's also a step down the direction of of how do we become a more um sophisticated uh selling organization love it I mean it sounds super intriguing and no and I know there's a lot of other excitement in different industries about that product so um you know good luck with the implementation um it it sounds sounds like a product that could really positively impact credit unions and give it give give sales teams that additional incentive but also the visibility on what they can stand to make if XYZ deal goes through right so um all intriguing stuff um well Chris we are at time um it's been an absolute delight having you on uh the show today um our first guest talking exclusively or primarily on the topic of credit union so uh I learned a lot Maz I'm sure you did as well as um and um you know thanks again Chris uh for for for being part of today's conversation awesome thank you guys enjoyed it for our future uh listeners and and episodes please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show uh for more uh takeaways and future episodes um and that's all for today thank you